


Pride, Wrath, and Kindness

by OverthinkingFeathers



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 01:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11544852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverthinkingFeathers/pseuds/OverthinkingFeathers
Summary: A collection of 3 short stories from the prompts pride, wrath, and kindness for Anders. One established m!Handers, one without relationship mentioned, and one beginning f!Handers.





	Pride, Wrath, and Kindness

The lines on Hawke’s face are increasing.

Anders has memorized them all, each soft imprint and crease clear as day in his memory. He noticed them long ago, back when Hawke would come down to the clinic to ask about the Deep Roads or darkspawn or nothing much at all. Hawke doesn’t hide his emotions, and the lines on his face are a tribute to that. They’ve doubled in number over the years, part of the price of living in such a chaotic city, and Anders has traced every new addition with reverent fingers, adding them to his mental map of his lover’s face. He knows them all by heart.

He doesn’t know his own face that well. Once, before he was this, he would have spent time memorizing his own signs of aging, looked for the best angles and lighting to downplay it. Vanity is a distant concept now. How the world sees him is immaterial; it’s what he does that matters.

So when Varric comments, “You really don’t age, do you, Blondie? I’m starting to think you’re stuck in time,” the irony is not lost on him. He confirms it in the mirror later that night, Hawke asleep one room over. There are lines there, but they are subtle, faint, and he has to bring the light closer to see them. He drags his hands through his hair but cannot find any hint of the silver that’s been beginning to thread through all his friends’ hair. No new scars but then, he’s a healer. Some things should be expected.

He has a lot of memories - too many memories from too many angles, most of them wrong - to pretend he looks any different now than when he was a Warden years before. His body seems to have forgotten how to age.

There was a time when this would have thrilled him. It should still - significant change isn’t instant, isn’t lasting if there’s no one to watch over it. If he can usher in a world without circles, can stay around to make sure the templars don’t regain power… He should be grateful for the opportunity. Leaving a revolution half done would be selfish. He’s never hidden from Hawke that mage freedom means more than his own life, more than his own relationships.

But the man in the next room is aging, and in the darkened mirror, Anders can’t find it in himself to be grateful.

 

* * *

 

 

The Chantry says those that are good go to the Maker’s side when they die.

They’re wrong, at least in Kirkwall. Anders can always hear them, whispering their tales against the edge of his consciousness. When he’s tired or there’s too many of them, he can hear them as plainly as a person standing next to him, and when he burns the lyrium in his blood, it’s like they’re shouting in his head. Their stories change, but the underlying premise is always the same. Lives cut too short, too violent, too unfulfilled.

The tunnels beneath the Gallows are crawling with spirits. Slaves who built the tunnels, lyrium smugglers done in by betrayal, and so many mages. Mages threatened and hurt and killed, and all of them want justice, want revenge, want to know that someone cares. 

There are a hundred spirits that cling in the air around Alrik and his cronies, a hundred people who deserved a different fate, and if Anders walks away, there will be more later. No one will stop him. No will care. They will watch it and condone it.

The lyrium burns as bright as his anger.

Killing templars is  _easy_ , is  _satisfying_. None who stand before him are innocent. Their weapons cannot hurt him, and he does not need steel or wood to rend them apart or set them aflame. They come at him, and they fall. A death in battle may not be what they deserve - it’s too easy, too obscuring of their crimes - but it’s the closest thing to justice that he can do.

But there are a limited number of templars in this cavern, and they do not account for all the crimes visited upon mages, even here. “They will die,” he declares, and it’s a promise to the spirits that still press against the Veil here, hungry and wanting. “I will have every last templar for these abuses.”

“We’ll kill them all, I promise.”

Hawke’s tone is resolute, steady, and he turns to seal the pact. An ally would be welcome. “Every one of them will feel justice’s burn.”

The path right now seems easy and right. There is resolution in blood and victory. This is what the victims want, and this is what he will give them. This is what is just.

But the person behind him squeaks, “Get away from me, demon,” as though he’s another instrument of terror, a pawn the templars use. He is not. He is salvation and equity, the only being in this mortal world to speak for the dead.

“I am no demon,” and the shape does not relax, does not stop cowering, does not believe and know him. “Are you one of them, that you would call me such?”

“Anders,” Hawke says, advancing slow and careful. “That girl is a mage. We rescued her from being made Tranquil.”

But Hawke is wrong. An innocent would recognize him for what he was. “She is theirs. I can feel their hold on her.” She is too warped to see what justice looks like. With no sense of what is right, she will only aid the evil. 

“She’s the reason you’re fighting, Anders. Don’t turn on her now.”

Hawke rarely argues without a good reason, but the girl pleads for forgiveness, guilty and still afraid, and the spirits are exultant. There is a finality in death. There are too many victims already, but he can prevent more. It’s his duty. 

He raises his weapon, and the voices fall silent, waiting in a silence thick with anticipation and need. It’s only then that he sees.

His staff clatters to the ground as the girl runs.

 

* * *

 

 

“Why do you help them?”

The clinic is quiet, the last patient for the night barely past the doors. The man had a minor throat infection, and Anders used what little mana he had left to cure it. This night, like most, will end with him utterly exhausted.

Hawke knows why she keeps coming here. The thrill of finding another apostate, especially one so proud of his abilities, has enticed her to making frequent trips to the clinic. Carver may disapprove, but this forming friendship is the first connection she’s felt in Kirkwall.

What she doesn’t understand is why he runs the clinic. There’s no benefit to it, nothing the patients can give him that wouldn’t be better served by anonymity and his own skills. Or, she thinks when he looks puzzled, maybe she does understand and just doesn’t believe. Good people don’t last long in this world.

“Why wouldn’t I?” His tone is as genuine as hers.

“They’re Fereldan. I would never speak ill of our home country,” and that’s a joke, because she hates and misses it equally, “but the people there aren’t exactly welcoming to mages. Maybe not as bad as some, but the Circle isn’t empty.” She pauses, waits to see if the realization will change his contemplative expression. It doesn’t. “Most of these people would have turned you in.”

Anders shrugs and stretches, working a kink in his neck. His knees are covered in dust, the result of kneeling on the Darktown floor for so long. “This isn’t Ferelden. And even if it was, these people need help. I couldn’t walk away and let them suffer.” He turns serious eyes on her. “Could you?”

Hawke wishes she could say no, but it’s not the truth. There’s a reason her family was never caught by the templars.

Anders judges the silence correctly. “I see.” He sighs. “Well, for what it’s worth, I think most people would value their own lives higher than others. It’s not unnatural.”

The silence stretches on as he rearranges his bandage supply, and Hawke wishes she could take the question back. Then he crosses over and sits down next to her, and the worry lifts a little. “Healing people lets them see the good in mages, but it’s more than that. You can’t judge people on what they could have done, only what they did. No one who comes to my clinic has turned me in yet. I won’t deny them relief on the assumption that they will. If I did, I’d be starting down the same path I caution against.”

There are too many things Hawke could say, things like  _You know that’s dangerous_  or  _I don’t think being careful is going to end with you imprisoning Fereldans_. What she says instead is, “I like a man with more self sacrifice than sense.”

He laughs, and that will have to do.


End file.
